A Moral Impasse
by fieldagent85
Summary: Nora and William discuss Kitty's homecoming. Midep for 1.01: Patriarchy.


He had given up on waiting for her somewhere in the late '70s. There was always something she needed to do, some inane task she needed to complete before she could focus on seemingly trivial matters like spending time with her husband. Tonight, it was the dishes. Long after the kids had gone back to their respective cages, Nora was still cleaning up their mess, as she had been doing for years. Despite his many offers of assistance, she always insisted on doing things herself, fiercely independent as she was. And so, William Walker crawled into bed with the latest Grisham novel, vaguely soothed by the sound of running water drifting upstairs. As his eyes scoured the pages, his mind wandered, overwhelmed with incessant thoughts of the evening he had just spent with the entirety of his immediate family. It wasn't often he was fortunate enough to enjoy the company of all five of his children in the same room, let alone the same state. Wonderful as it was, the experience was not without a fair amount of tension and anxiety. 

He heard her footsteps ascending the stairs long before she came into view. After over forty years of marriage, he had become accustomed to the smallest things about her, inconsequential yet strangely fascinating. She was incredibly tiny and thus, fragile, and her footsteps were indicative of that. If you didn't know what you were listening for, you would never hear her. Fortunately, William did. He glanced up at her fleetingly when she finally entered the room, wearing a silk red bathrobe with a white slip underneath. Her hair was messily thrown into a ponytail and dark circles were beginning to form beneath her eyes, an unpleasant side effect of family reunions. Before she could walk past him and into the bathroom, he quickly lowered his book and directed his attention to her. 

"So whose idea was that hug earlier?" 

Nora stopped in her tracks and turned her head. He smiled deviously at her astonished expression. 

"Desperate as I am for a tearful reunion, my desperation is not so overpowering that it blinds me, love." 

She pursd her lips and placed her hands on her hips in an act of both defiance and submission. 

"It was my idea," Nora admitted, but not without a smidgen of reluctance. 

William nodded knowingly, having predicted this hours earlier. 

"Of course. Liberals are often much craftier than their conservative counterparts." 

Nora rolled her eyes as she walked toward the bathroom and retorted, "Says the man who voted for Bush." 

"Only the first time," William replied after she had disappeared into the bathroom. "I learned my lesson by the time 2004 rolled around." 

He picked up his Grisham novel and stared vacantly at the pages, his mind unconcerned with the words spread out before him. He could not, for the life of him, convince the broken relationship of his wife and daughter to leave his thoughts alone. After a few moments of silence, Nora emerged from the bathroom, having discarded her bathrobe and her slippers. She moved in front of the mirror and manipulated the ponytail from her hair and allowed it to fall freely. After she had done this, she noticed her husband's eyes on her via the mirror's reflection. She smiled discreetly and spun around. 

"Yes?" 

"Let it go, Nora," William said, softly. 

She squinted in confusion, suddenly realizing that his train of thought hadn't changed tracks since she had temporarily abandoned him for the bathroom. 

"What?" 

He closed his book and placed it back in its position on the nightstand. 

"Please. Just let it go." 

His tone was far from insistent, yet she felt a certain softspoken urgency in his voice that she couldn't ignore. 

"You're talking about Kitty," she assumed, quietly. 

"It's been three years now. Three years since you gave up on your relationship with your daughter. Don't you think it's time you just…let it go?" 

She took a deep breath in an effort to thwart the tears that threatened her. 

"If you don't think that it kills me every day…" 

William sat up straight, taking fervent interest in the conversation. 

"It was an argument. A long, drawn-out argument that was blown completely out of proportion. That's all it was. It can't be so hard to fix." 

"It was not an argument," Nora responded firmly, the advent of tears now becoming a very real possibility. "It was…a moral impasse." 

"A moral impasse," William repeated skeptically. 

The incredulous expression on his face soon started the fade the moment he witnessed the tears began their descent down the delicate skin of her cheeks. 

"She sent my baby to war!" Nora exclaimed, beside herself. "She sent him to the front lines. She did this to him. The drugs, the directionlessness…and anyone who doesn't see his PTSD must be blind to all manner of things because that child is traumatized, Will! And for what? For the good of the country? What country? Certainly not ours, and certainly not theirs. So, you tell me why. Tell me why your youngest child was forced to put his life on the line! Tell me why his future had been reduced to that of an aimless vagrant! You don't know why. Well, I do. It's people like her, William. The propaganda…the mindless, sheep-like mentality this country has fallen prey to. She sent my child to war. And I can't…I can't…" 

Astonished and profoundly moved by her tirade and her tears, he gently took her face in his hands and brushed away her tears with his thumbs. 

"Sweetheart, listen to me," William began softly. "Kitty is not responsible for Justin any more than I am, or Tommy is." 

Nora shook her head. 

"You didn't publicize your views. Tommy didn't publicize his views. She…she makes a living off it! She makes a living off advocating the deaths of thousands of American soldiers! How am I supposed to accept that? How am I supposed to understand what she's done? What she does?" 

"I know you're looking for someone to blame and Kitty is the closest thing you've got, but your feelings are completely misguided and I think you know that. The sooner you let go all of that misdirected anger, the sooner you'll both be able to move forward, with your lives and your relationship." 

"I can't." Sobbing profusely, she buried her head in her husband's shoulder. "I can't." 

William sighed in defeat and wrapped his arms around her in the act of the supportive husband. For the next few moments, he held her as she wept, silently lamenting that he had ever let it get this far. He should have confronted her early on and forced her to reevaluate her anger before it spun out of control. 

Despite all of this, somewhere in his mind, he knew it was not too late. 

THE END. 


End file.
